The Book Blogger Hop was originally created by Jennifer @ Crazy-For-Books in March 2010 and ended on December 31, 2012. With Jennifer’s permission, Billy @coffeeaddictedwriter relaunched the hop on February 15, 2013. Each week the hop will start on a Friday and end the following Thursday. There will be a weekly prompt featuring a book related question. The hop’s purpose is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, befriend other bloggers, and receive new followers to your own blog. 

Have I switched (reading) genres? Yes. And no.

Bookish Thoughts

When I started out blogging as Bookstogetlostin, I read and reviewed a mix of nearly everything. My first review – in June 2015! god I’m old – was for Laura Bates’ Everyday Sexism and there was no theme to my reviewing so to say. I wanted it to be Books to get lost in but 3 stars or less reviews were far more often.

So not a lot of getting lost in books happening. Maybe getting lost in ranting, now that I remember that time.

Anyway. I stayed with that name for a few years, but slowly the books I reviewed changed. More and more of them featured queer characters.

Back then “LGBTQIA+” in its various acronyms was considered a genre. Because I didn’t have a theme for my blogging

I went ahead with that and marked it as a genre in my reviews for queer books since I wanted readers to know immediately what’s it about even if it felt weird.

The Queer’s Reviewing

Then I relaunched my blog as The Queer Bookish and finally, there was a clear theme. So since November 2019 I only review queer books and keep everything else away from my blog. Which felt… freeing. And right. I found my place on the blogging map so to say.

I might be considering the Bookish part of my name and expanding on that area but for now, I don’t have any plans.

With the switch to queer books only there was and still is a noticeable switch in genres too. When I was younger I didn’t read romance. I was all about fantasy, crime, and thriller books. Later I included young adult and paranormal. That slowly changed and I think it was heavily influenced by the books I read.

I still love those genres but it’s harder finding those books with queer characters it feels like. Do you have any recommendations? Hit me up with them!

Nonfiction books aren’t as heavily featured on my blog – especially because they have to be about queer topics – but lately they are also filling my bookshelves.

So maybe I’m not really switching genres but widening my genre horizon? While at the same time I don’t have as much time and energy for reading and working on my blog as I had when I started out. A 40-hour work week, a long commute to work with an exhausted brain on the way back, and living on your own might do that to you.